Thursday, March 22, 2012

Life after Death

I want to talk about 'reincarnation' or as Vitvan prefers to call it, the palingenetic process. It's a subject I used to be so fascinated by and seemingly proved for me everything else about the mystery teachings and just the purposefulness of life, yet now I rarely speak about. A large part of the reason I don't talk about it anymore is because Vitvan threw a wrench in to the whole concept of reincarnation as it relates to my understanding. For most people, speaking on reincarnation is partly an egotistical indulgence. You get to think about your past lives and how important you were and what adventurous experiences you took part in. Well Vitvan shuts down this whole notion by professing that the personality never reincarnates. So when you take away that egotistical aspect of reincarnation, then many will lose interest. And going further, it is a concept that is difficult to grasp. I can think back to when I first read Vitvan's ideas on reincarnation. I remember feeling a sadness. I felt like something was taken away from me. It goes hand in hand with his concept of there being no I am I in itself. The personality is not retained. Just as the physical body is shed at death, the astral body or personality is soon to follow. And for me a neophyte newly initiated into the deeper teachings, I felt very proud of myself and my intellectual understanding of the teachings. To think that when this life is said and done that this all will be returned to dust was a sad notion for me. Well since then that type of egotism in relation to the personality reincarnating and building an ego has receded. If that is the natural order, which I believe it to be, then what is the point in fighting it? I would just be holding onto some phantom mental construct, just the things that through the help of Vitvan and General Semantics I was learning to rid myself of.

So if you were to talk to someone who had not studied Vitvan or any type of true mystery teachings, you would likely not on the same wavelength in regard to discussing the personality not creating. It takes time to work that into the consciousness. And that is a difficulty with Vitvan's whole system of teaching. It is very specific and has it's own language and orientation. You have no shot in getting it over to a pure aristotelian who has never studied metaphsyics or occultism. And you'll likely have trouble communicating it to someone who has a foundation in metaphysics and occultism. One could likely get oriented toward after 6 months to a year, but who blindly wants to commit all of that time and energy on some blind faith. There seemingly aren't many who are willing to invest in it. Not to mention most find their preferred teachers and doctrines and they stick with that for the long haul. I'm not knocking it, thats just how it seems to work.

So going farther into the concept of reincarnation. I was watching a Youtube video of a man who was into magic and spirituality. He was leaving Youtube and posting his farewell video. He talked of being withdrawn from the world. He spoke of having visions of a unity deep within his consciousness. In other words, he had entertained the idea of suicide to re-connect the oneness and unity of all things because of the bitter disappointment he was experiencing on this 'plane'. That's obviously a monstrous semantic blockage. If I could only leave this world I'd be better off in heaven. There I would know true love. And I'm not knocking it, I think many of us have entertained these ideas at some point or another. But if we were to understand the true structure of things then I think suicides would be greatly curbed. In reality, they will only be increasing as the years go by. You have more and more people forced to interact and culture that becomes exponentially more decadent with the passing years. There will be those who do not fit who are ostracized and outcasted who will see no other way out.

So the truth in my mind (and this is what Vitvan teaches and can be cross referenced through studying other teachers' writings) is that when one ends their life before it is their time that the archetype for the life or field of desire still exists, only now there is no material with which to go out and achieve those desires. So you can kill off and divest yourself of the body, but you cannot rid yourself of the pattern that was yours and yours alone that you created upon entering into this world. Thus it is that much worse to have the pattern remain yet have no means by which to fulfill it. One would now suffer that much more in this experience than he was suffering when he exited the waking earth life. It sounds hard to belief probably that one who found no other alternative and went against his Self and those inner desires would find a worse fate than he had when he decided to commit suicide, but that seems to be the case. To go Aristotelian, your human will does not have the right to assume the position of God and make those choices from your personal desires. But there is no condemning on my part, in that person's consciousness at that time, somehow they found the power to thwart the will of the Self. That is the only decision that made sense to them at the time. And so they will learn from that mistake and it will be a painful imprinting they will seemingly receive. So the lesson is that any experience that we go through here on earth is better than having to experience life "on the other side" as a suicide. And going further, either way the law or natural order process will find its balance.

Moving on, another aspect of death and a spiritualist's view on what is to come afterwards is that there will be exalted consciousness, heaven will be experienced in peace and love. Vitvan teaches that this is not necessarily the case. For instance, one might say that he now in this earth life through his studies, knows that he is a deathless, eternal, immortal being. And in this knowing, when he sheds this gross, material body, he will experience that immortality. This thinking is based in dualistic thinking. It separates the world into two: the 'material' and 'spiritual' worlds. While in this life, a person who has this may put all of his energy into escaping this dross, material world in search of the exalted spiritual world. So in essence, that would equate to searching for absolutism in dualism. But in experiencing absolutism there can be no dual existence. What I mean here is that when one reaches an absolute condition, the duality disappears. What I mean and what Vitvan teaches is that there is no getting to some exalted state by trying to escape one circumstance for another. At the core there is only one world. You must manifest it here, bring heaven to earth here, to experience "after death." So there can be no 'spiritual' world that is higher than the 'material' world. These abstracted worlds can have no existence in reality because if you take one away, the other must fall away.

So in reality, according to Vitvan, when we pass out we will experience the same state of consciousness that we had in our "waking life." So you could separate ones who functioned in the lower psyche, higher psyche and on the Mind level. We'll just consider these arbitrary values or abstractions having no basis in the true structure of things. But so if one were to function in the lower psyche in earth life, upon exiting the body or configuration, he would dwell in the lower astral world for a period. At some point when it was time to move on to the higher levels and begin building the archetype for the subsequent life to be lived, that one would go 'unconscious'. Why would he go unconscious? Because he had not yet developed a body to function in the 'higher levels'. One who functioned in the higher psyche in earth life, otherwise considered the mental body, would exit the body and find resonance with the higher astral plane and experience that state until he moved to levels that he was not able to consciously function on. Now we make the line of demarcation at the Mind level. Vitvan tells us that one who makes the second crossing over to the Mind level has obtained immortality. This means that that one has continuity of consciousness. Now so called death would not mean death at all. This one on the Mind level would be just as conscious as he was in so called "waking life." So expecting immortality because we believe in Jesus or have a conceptual understanding of how the cosmos works is pure stupidity. It is not natural order. I personally am not disparaging the belief in something higher or the intellectual understanding, but it is not commensurate with how we experience life after death. That is based off of our basic point in development according to Vitvan.

So it all sounds so bleak?!?!?! We have to do the work. No one can take in nourishment for us. "Faith without works is dead." So yeah, in my opinion when you put it all on the table it is difficult to accept and go forth and fight the good fight. There is much working against us and most of the time we are at the forefront halting our own progress. But this is why the process is so perfect. One can't skirt around the duties of life by committing suicide. One cannot go to "heaven" by simply believing in Jesus Christ. It is about the work. And that work becomes seemingly easier if we obtain a good road map, but the map is not the territory. In my opinion the road map lays everything out on the table. A good road map acknowledges that impurities must first be purged. Otherwise we are only deluding ourselves that we can take our lower qualities with us as we expand our consciousness into the heights. That's like saying the dark can exist in the light. So it is not sweetness and light, it is a fucking hell of a job, work to do. And when it is all put on the table, all the demons come out of their hole and you see yourself for who you are, the task seems even that much more difficult. "Shit, I didn't sign up for all this". "Oh yes, you did!" I guess it is a question of ignorance versus strife. And I guess all comes to the light for a reason. And if it came by accident a great lesson will still be learned anyways. Bad or good, what do you mean? All is for Good.

1 comment:

Well stated Evan, thank you. Vitvan called it the palengenetic process, a concept so much richer and deeper than thinking that our little egos come back again and again in a new body. Here is what he said in The Natural Order Process Volume 3: "As far as the individual is concerned, in this phase of the cosmic process which we label the second aspect of the Logos, he, the individual, becomes conscious of the whole palengenetic cycle and the meaning, implications, etc. thereof. He is just as conscious between death and birth as he is between birth and death, if not more so. His ultimate objective and goal is to emancipate himself from the palingenetic cycle as the return into incarnation in the earth-sphere is called "the descent into hell." The highest point of this evolutionary phase as individual is called Ishvara in the orient, and in Christian mysticism it is represented as the oneness of Christ with the Father..."